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Pacesetters Program

NCWIT Pacesetters is a unique fast-track program where company and university leaders work together to increase their organization’s number of technical women at an accelerated pace. NCWIT Pacesetters employ innovative methods and set quantifiable goals to recruit untapped talent pools of “Net New Women” — technical women who would otherwise pursue non‑computing careers or would be at risk of leaving. Watch this video to see the Pacesetters talk about the importance of this work. In our 2010 pilot program, Pacesetters added or retained 1,685 NNW to the U.S. tech talent pool in just two years shredding their goal of 1,000. You can read more about Pacesetters results in this 2012 article in Communications of the ACM (CACM). Our 2013 Pacesetters have already made significant progress on their goal of 2000 Net New Women by the end of 2014.

National Action Platforms for Change

NCWIT Pacesetters work together to deliver national action platforms that give other organizations the motivation and infrastructure to mobilize their own change efforts. The 2010 Pacesetters cohort influenced the inception of Sit With Me, a national advocacy campaign that provides a platform to raise the visibility of technical women and acknowledge the valuable contributions of women in computing. Watch this video about Pacesetters in red chairs. The current Pacesetters are working on a new action platform, Transforming Technical Job Ads, an effort to improve outdated and ineffective technical job descriptions and advertisements, using these new NCWIT resources: